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Railroad Tampers

Please note that the images here depict general railroad MOW equipment, not tampers.

Railroad tampers are another type of maintenance equipment that have greatly improved the efficiency and speed in maintaining the track and right-of-way. As there name implies railroad tampers use hydraulic jacks to "tamp" the ballast, which levels the stone around the ties as well as works it underneath the ties for proper support. The newest tampers come equipped with a bevy of electronics to also properly align the track after tamping and what are known as production tampers have the capability of lifting the rails to insure that the ballast is beneath the ties for maximum support.

Before the advent of mechanized railroad tampers the work of getting ballast beneath the ties as well as aligning the track was all done by hand and a good eye. The job involved a track gang of men who would push the ballast beneath the ties one at a time and track jacks were used to properly align the rails. As you can imagine it was slow, very labor intensive work all of which has been greatly improved with the mechanized railroad tamper.

Railroad tampers almost always work as some kind of mechanized gang, usually as part of a tie or rail gang (which today normally consists of an army of machines, not men). Today's tie and rail gangs include such machines as spike or rail anchor pullers (which pull the spikes/anchors clear of the tie), tie cranes (which remove the railroad ties once they are free of the rails), tie extractors/inserters (different from a tie crane these machines work vertically to remove or replace the railroad tie from underneath the rail), and spike inserters (as you might have guessed these machines use hydraulics to quickly drive spikes down in the tie plate and tie itself).

If very heavy work is being done other large equipment will be used such as a mechanized tie relaying machine (which is essentially a type of railroad tie inserter) and/or even a rail train if new rail is to be laid. As it is, tie and rail gangs may look like machines simply heading off to work in an elephant line. However, they are actually very coordinated work details with each machine and accompanying operator assigned a very specific task to get the work done as quickly as possible. The reason for speed and hastiness in finishing a maintenance job is simply, to keep the trains and goods moving. Delays are quite costly and avoided at all costs because if the freight isn't delivered the railroad's don't get paid!

Standard railroad tampers work by using sets of heavy-grade steel jacks, which are hydraulically controlled, and feature a small paddle-like design on the very end of the tool. These jacks are then lowered into the ballast at a certain depth, depending on the thickness of the ties and oscillate at thousands of revolutions per minute. This back and forth motion, along with "pushing" the ballast downward, allows the stone to become very free flowing and causes it to work beneath the ties, giving the track structure maximum support. Tamping also helps to level out the ballast a bit, although final sculpting and angling of the stone is left to ballast regulators.

Perhaps, though, the most efficient type of railroad tamper is the production tamper. Looking as if it is a type of auto carrier a production tamper is capable of lifting the entire track structure where it is working (the reason for the extra support beams built into the machine). The purpose of this is so the machine can not only more efficiently situate the ballast beneath and around the ties but also to properly align the track as well.

Using what is known as the Delta System developed in the 1950s production tampers are able to remove the bumps and dips in the rail by aligning the track to a perfectly "flat" traveling surface (excluding superelevated curved track) using triangulation. One other type of railroad tamper is the switch tamper, which is able to swivel its equipment and jacks to work the intricate spaces between railroad switches and diamonds.

For more information about railroad maintenance equipment you may want to consider picking up a copy of Brian Solomon's book, Railway Maintenance: The Men and Machines That Keep the Railroads Running. I have a copy of the book and not only used it for reference in covering all of the railroad maintenance equipment featured on this site but also found it very interesting as I learned much about a subject of the industry I had known only little about before. If you’re interested in learning more about the maintenance aspect of railroading you will definitely enjoy this book. If you're interested in perhaps purchasing it please visit The Railroad Diamond by clicking the tab in the menu to your left marked "TRD Store".

Also, for even more information about railroad tampers, ballast regulators, spike pullers, ballast cleaners, railroad undercutters, ditch diggers, and other MOW equipment please click here to return to the main menu.

For more reading about tampers you may want to consider the book Railway Maintenance Equipment: The Men and Machines That Keep the Railroads Running from noted author Brian Solomon. Throughout the book's 128 pages Solomon covers all types of maintenance equipment from tampers and undercutters to Jordan Spreaders and rotary snow plows. I own this book myself and have used it as reference material for this site many times. It's a great read on an often little understood area of railroading. If you're interested in perhaps purchasing this book please visit the link below which will take you to ordering information through Amazon.com, the trusted online shopping network.

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